


Reset

by seashadows



Series: Tell Me Inside Out [4]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:45:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is tired of being forgotten and shoved aside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reset

“We can’t keep doing this, Nathan. No more rebounding.”   
  
Nathan’s eyebrows were darkly furrowed, a dangerous face if there ever was one. “The fuck are you talking about? I haven’t played basketball in, uhhhh…I dunno. Weeks. Years.” His green eyes sparked into Charles’s.   
  
“You can’t seriously think that I believe you’re so obtuse,” Charles said. He’d been angry at Nathan before, but this was a sharp, stinging fury akin to a horde of raging bees somewhere in the region of his heart. “ _Abigail_ , Nathan. You declared your feelings for her in front of every single fucking Crystal Mountain exec, and in front of me, too.” It was getting easier to say things like that addendum now, but he still had to rip the words from between his lips, as though they clung. “What am I to you?”   
  
A corner of Nathan’s lip lifted as he bared his teeth. “Robot,” he muttered in a mutinous tone. “Fuckin’ –“   
  
“Shut the fuck up, Nathan. _Now_.” Charles’s clenched fists shook with pure anger. “I’m about half a step away from shoving a sword between your ribs. Now answer me this: when have I ever been sentimental with you?”   
  
Nathan snorted. “Never. You’re not a, um…a fuckin’ pussy.”   
  
“Right.” Perverse happiness, at that. At least Nathan had noticed something. “Exactly. So you can believe me when I say that this has to stop.” He drew in his breath. “I’m not your fucktoy. Got it? That’s not going to happen. You can’t ostentatiously declare your _love_ for Abigail and moon over her, and then seriously expect me not to get angry when you come to my office looking for chips and a blowjob.”   
  
The singer’s lips parted, then closed. “Um…” The corners of his mouth curled into a smirk. “Well, the fuck’m I _supposed_ to do? You give really good blowjobs. And…handjobs.”   
  
The fucker had just crossed the line. Charles would give him a fucking _handjob_ , if he wanted one so badly. He lifted his fist ( _don’t telegraph, even with a dumbass, Ofdensen_ ) and slammed it as hard as he could into the side of Nathan’s face, where his cheek met his jaw.   
  
For a second, Nathan didn’t react – and then he was out of his chair. His furious face filled Charles’s field of vision, only to be replaced a fraction of a second later by his fist.   
  
He was fairly sure that that hard, popping _crack_ had reverberated into the inside of his skull.   
  
Charles tried to breathe in, wavered when that produced a pain so sharp that he could almost _see_ it, and fortunately dropped back into his chair in lieu of dropping to his knees (which might give Nathan ideas). He couldn’t tell if his nose was broken, although it had certainly exploded with enough blood to be fractured. “I…” His voice came out choked with pain. “I should have expected that.”   
  
“Yeah, you fuckin’ should’ve!” Nathan flicked his eyes down at his fist, as though surprised that it was still attached to his hand, and plunked his ass back in his own chair. “You don’t bring me into your office and _punch_ me, you fuckin’ dick.”   
  
Charles touched his nose with his palm and gritted his teeth, then looked at the blood on his hand. “Breaking my nose is hardly a proportionate response.” He could barely get the words out without gasping in pain – yes, it was almost definitely broken. Still, this wasn’t even close to the worst he’d experienced.   
  
_That_ had begun with a hand coming towards his face, too, but then, he’d seen Nathan standing over him as his vision wavered and finally faded into blackness. The Metal Masked Assassin had beaten him nearly to pieces, and Nathan had rallied the rest of the band into getting him help then…although he was doing the opposite now.   
  
_”Guys, get me a fuckin’ Gear, NOW!”_   
  
Nathan’s reaction now couldn’t be more different. “Well…fuck you. You pissed me off.” He scratched under one thick arm and glared, which Charles could hardly see for the moisture in his eyes.   
  
“Yes, because –“ He touched the bridge of his nose with the tip of his fingers and winced, but satisfied himself that it wasn’t bent horribly out of shape. Of course, Nathan _would_ get his nose put out of joint and then do the same thing to Charles, literally. “Answer me this, Nathan. How is it that you’re comfortable standing up in front of every single Crystal Mountain executive and announcing your love for a woman you haven’t known for two months, but can’t bring yourself to say that you teach?”   
  
“We’ve been over this,” Nathan growled, and adjusted his ass in the chair. Why Charles had ever thought that sitting across from Nathan on the _same side_ of the desk was a good idea was beyond him. He should have remembered that the man got fucking violent when someone looked at him cross-eyed. “It’s _my_ thing, and Abigail’s my girlfriend. They’re my shit.”   
  
“Okay - _nn_ , ow.” Pinching the bridge of his nose had been a bad idea, too. Clearly he was zero for zero today. “Horrible phrasing aside, you can’t lay claim to Abigail. She’s not interested in you – do you understand me?”   
  
Nathan’s cheeks flushed, although Charles couldn’t tell if anger or embarrassment was the culprit. “The fuck? Do _you_ want her? ‘Cause you can’t have her. She’s my fuckin’ girlfriend.”   
  
“ _Nathan_.” Charles stood up (the only position in which he would have any sort of physical advantage over a seated Nathan) and held Nathan’s gaze. “Listen to me. She is not interested. She’s avoided you since the…incident on the submarine, she looked absolutely _shocked_ when you made that idiotic announcement at the executives’ dinner, and if I’m correct, she hasn’t returned any of your calls.”   
  
“Wait – did you listen to my voicemail?” Well, there went the height advantage. Nathan stood up so quickly that the chair tipped over and glared at him, his face so close that Charles could feel the heat radiating from the sweat on his nose and cheeks.   
  
“You’re incredibly easy to read,” Charles said. He wasn’t about to let Nathan Explosion intimidate him, not now. “If she’d called back, you’d probably be floating on a cloud and annoying the hell out of your bandmates. As it is, your mood has been consistently horrible since we got off the sub.” His nose throbbed, and he squeezed his eyes shut for half a second or so.   
  
“I love her,” Nathan said. He sat back down, scowling and thrusting his feet out in front of him as he slumped in his chair. “’Cause she’s hot and I, um...” He looked down at his feet and blushed polluted-sunset-red. “I kind of went down on her. In the sub. But she was pushin’ my head down, so...”   
  
“I’m well aware of what you did in the sub, Nathan,” Charles interrupted. He didn’t particularly like thinking about what Nathan had done any more than the singer did. If anything, it was more definitive proof than anything else that Abigail at least wasn’t opposed to having Nathan do things to her, a thought that hurt almost as much as his throbbing nose did.   
  
Loath, of course, as he was to admit it.   
  
“Hey.” Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “What the _fuck_? Did I…did I break your fuckin’ nose? Holy shit, I did.”   
  
Never before had Charles so badly wanted to say ‘no shit, Sherlock.’ Given his position relative to Nathan, though (figuratively, of course; they were as far from literal positions as he suspected they ever had been), he had to settle for a curt “I believe you did, yes.”   
  
“Fuck.” Nathan stood up again and peered at Charles’s nose. “Shit, it’s all – all swelly already.”   
  
“Swollen,” Charles said automatically. “But never mind.”   
  
“Yeah.” Nathan blinked a few times as his train of thought quite visibly reset itself. “It’s really swollen. I gotta set that thing now, or…or it’ll get even puffier, and Dr. What’s-his-face is gonna have to break it again. At the hospital…man, that’s _brutal_. Hospitals suck.”   
  
“Well, what do you suggest I – did you just say that _you_ want to set it?” Charles edged back slightly, shuddering when his chair legs scraped the stone floor and jostled vibrations up to his nose. “I’m, uh, definitely not comfortable having that happen.”   
  
“You gotta.” Nathan moved closer. “Look, there are two, uhhhhh… _choices_ here. I gotta set it now, ‘cause if you don’t, you gotta go to the hospital and they’ll set it. And they’ll break it again, and that’ll suck even worse.”   
  
“All right. For one thing, you just used the word ‘gotta’ three times in two sentences. For another, I highly doubt that the doctors will have to rebreak my nose twenty minutes after it was first broken.” They’d certainly have to give him a decongestant, though. He sounded like Eric Cartman.   
  
Nathan snorted. Charles’s nose throbbed again, probably psychosomatically. “Wanna try? If I set it, it won’t hurt as much. I got a fuckin’ Ph.D in anatomy, remember? I know you do, ‘cause you were just yakkin’ about it.”   
  
He wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to get out of this, that much was for sure. “How much of a guarantee can you give me that this isn’t going to lead to permanent disfigurement?”   
  
“Since when do you care about that shit?” Nathan shot back.   
  
“I don’t,” Charles said. It was half a lie, but Nathan couldn’t tell the difference. “But Crystal Mountain does.”   
  
Nathan nodded, slowly, and licked something out of the corner of his mouth. “Man, I _love_ cinnamon shit…”   
  
“Broken nose, Nathan,” Charles sighed. “That’s what we were talking about.”   
  
“Oh, right. So I was saying, Ph.D in fuckin’ _anatomy_.” Technically, he’d earlier said _fuckin’ Ph.D in anatomy_ , but Charles wasn’t about to quibble. “I probably know more than the stupid doctors about, uhhhh…setting noses and stuff. You ever think about that?”   
  
“Well…no,” Charles said, “I haven’t. But I’d still - _ow_ \- feel more comfortable.” The pain in his nose had moved beyond ‘throbbing’ into something not far from ‘debilitating.’ “Will the pain ease up if you set my nose?”   
  
Nathan shrugged. “It should. But you should take aspirin or, um…what’s that stuff Pickles takes when Toki hits him?”   
  
“Any number of very hazardous painkillers. I’ll stick with aspirin, thanks.” He couldn’t really afford to pull a Pickles now (or ever). “All right,” he said with a resigned sigh. “You can set my nose. What do I need to do?” Much to his surprise, Nathan stripped off his shirt, stood up, and started walking towards him. “Nathan, I _told_ you I don’t want it re-broken!” Hadn’t he caused enough pain with the first punch?   
  
“Ugh, stop freakin’ out, Charles. You gotta blow your nose before I set it.” Nathan held out his shirt. Even through the coagulating blood in his nose, Charles could smell the sweat.   
  
“I _do_ have handkerchiefs, you know.”   
  
“Yeah, well…it’s gonna be a lot of blood.” Nathan brandished the shirt dangerously close to his nose, making Charles lean back reflexively. “Blow your fuckin’ nose, and then I’ll set it.”   
  
It turned out that he was right about the blood thing. Charles made a face when, at his first attempt, the shirt turned into a bloodbath. “Ugh.” He set it aside and sniffed as softly as he could. “Set my nose.”   
  
“Okay. Hold still – this is gonna hurt like a _bitch_.” Nathan knelt in front of him (and yes, he did think of blowjobs, but who wouldn’t?) and put his palms on Charles’s cheeks. “Ready?”   
  
“Just do it already, Nathan.”   
  
“Okay.” Nathan closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “Uh…do that. Breathe in. Then breathe out.”   
  
Charles inhaled, then exhaled and – “ _Fuck!_ ” Without warning, Nathan had adjusted his hands into a choke hold on either side of his nose, then pulled them down. His eyes teared up, in spite of the fact that this was hardly the worst pain he’d ever experienced. “Are you finished?”   
  
Nathan narrowed his eyes and peered at Charles’s face. “Yeah, it looks okay,” he said. “Gonna be a giant fuckin’ bruise, though.” He chuckled, his mouth abruptly curling into a smile. “You’re gonna _really_ need Pickles’s stuff now.”   
  
“I don’t see what’s at all funny about this,” Charles said, irritated.   
  
“You gotta – hey. Are you _crying?_ ” Nathan brought his face even closer and stared. “Fuck, I made you cry! You’re…you’re a robot. You don’t cry. The fuck?”   
  
“Enough with the choppy language, Nathan. I’m not crying.” Charles pressed his fingers against his eyes. “It’s a little painful, that’s all.”   
  
“Still, I…fuck, I really hurt you, didn’t I?” That line appeared between Nathan’s eyes – the same one that Charles saw whenever the singer was having an epiphany in front of him. “Holy tittyfuck. Was…is, uhhhhh…is this how it felt when I, um. Said that about Abigail?”   
  
Well, well, the last horse was finally crossing the finish line. “If you can believe it, Nathan, that was worse.”   
  
“Oh, _man_.” Nathan’s face fell. “I’m…fuckin’ sorry, Charles. You, uh…you want me to fix it?”   
  
Charles’s expression hardly changed, save for a raised eyebrow, but had the scientists taken a laparoscopic exam of his innards, they might have seen a rainbow. Well, maybe if they’d been drinking the stuff that Pickles left lying around. “I want you to apologize to Abigail. Not in public,” he said quickly, so as to quell the Explosion Storm that always heralded the announcement of a public apology. “Privately. Call her, if you want, but she’s a good person and a more than competent producer, and I don’t want you driving her off.”   
  
“I guess.” Nathan visibly relaxed, reaching forward to touch Charles’s cheek. “Yeah, I’ll call her. And you better get Pickles to give you the good shit, ‘cause you’re gonna have huge shiners.”   
  
“And the pain comes from…?” Charles prompted. If this came from Nathan’s heart and from his personality, rather than pure guilt, he’d be able to snap into anatomy mode.   
  
“Easy.” Nathan grinned. “Supraorbital and suborbital nerves.”   
  
Charles figured he had nothing to worry about.   
  


~

  
  
_Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Abigail Remeltindtdrinc. I’m not available right now, but please leave your name, number, and message after the tone and I’ll call you as soon as I can. Thanks.  
  
BEEEP._   
  
“Hi, Abigail? This is, uhhhh…this is Nathan. I’m calling to, um. Ap-apologize, ‘cause I shouldn’t have said I fuckin’ loved you. It was a shitty thing to do. I mean, you’re a, uhhhh…you’re a nice lady, and you should have a guy who loves you. Or a lady. God, that would be hot.   
  
“What the fuck was I saying? Ohhhhhh. Oh, right. Yeah. I’m sorry. I guess…I guess I don’t love you. ‘Cause there’s someone else. I have this, uhhhhh…friend with, uhhh…benefits? Yeah. Friend with benefits. Yeah. And _they’re_ a really nice du - _dildo_. So, um, I’m gonna see you next time we record. If Pickles ever…what the fuck’s he doing? Gets off his bender or something. I’ll try to talk him out of – wait, is this the kind of message that lets you keep going, or is there a motherfuckin’ –“   
  
_BEEEEEEEP._

**Author's Note:**

> "The last horse crosses the finish line" is courtesy of Family Guy.


End file.
